Business process model driven approach for automatic use case model generation

Abstract

Requirement elicitation is an essential step for establishing software requirements. They define the outcomes upon which software functionality is produced. However, several studies have shown majority of errors found in software functionality are directly linked to requirement elicitation. To address, this paper proposes a structured approach to derive system requirements automatically using business process models. It employs a systematic mechanism to improve business process models and transformation method to generate requirement models. It employs 26 defined heuristics rules that maps and controls transformation. The proposed approach is evaluated using seven case studies. Results show the viability to generate software requirements from business process models, and the automatic generation of rich UML-based use case diagram. The proposed approach achieves more precise and valid requirement specifications and was able to generate additional valid use case model features compared to other competing approaches.